The Overnight

by Ramsey Campbell

  He has no idea why he hesitates before dashing in pursuit. They're only children, despite the tricks the murk and his nerves are eager to play. When the fog puts an end to an indistinct glimpse of the trio, it makes them appear to merge not only with it but also momentarily with each other. As he veers across the car park after them he catches sight of the audience of dolls in Baby Bunting, which explains why the notion of unfinished identical faces has lodged in his brain. The three small figures seem to be shuffling rather than running—that has to be why their movements sound barefoot, if not softer—and yet they're outdistancing him. He's unable to identify how they're dressed; the grey tatters that smudge their outlines must be fog, which has also steeped them in its colour. Then he's distracted by silhouettes of trees that drift into focus beside them, two saplings and the broken stump of a third. He thought he was heading for the buildings that are still to be completed, but somehow he has strayed back towards Texts. "Where are you wandering off to, Ray?" Woody calls behind him.

  He turns to see Woody gripping his hips with his splayed fingers in the shop entrance. Ray jerks his free hand at the saplings. "You can see I'm—"

  The hand hovers in the air with nothing else to do, because the tarmac is deserted. "Say what?" Woody shouts.

  Ray backs towards him, squinting at the fog in case the children resurface. "Did you see where they went?"

  "I don't talk to anybody's back, Ray." When Ray faces him Woody says "We saw you charging about and that's all. You just looked lost to me."

  "Some children are hiding out there. I thought …"

  "Did you? Maybe you want to check that out, Frank." As the guard heads for the splintered stump, Woody says "The way I heard it you were supposed to be taking care of Lorraine's father."

  "I did that. I took him to her car."

  "Did he give you that for your trouble?"

  He's gazing at the Frugo bag, which rustles as though indicating Ray can't keep still for guiltiness. "The car was by the supermarket and I thought I might as well nip in while I was there," Ray explains. "Women's things, you know, for my wife."

  "Nothing like efficiency, Ray."

  "We can call it my break."

  "Good idea," Woody says, and his gaze lets go of Ray. "Anything?" he shouts.

  "Can't see nobody," Frank's flattened voice responds.

  "Were they doing much, Ray?"

  "I told you, hiding."

  "Looks like they hid. I guess they might with someone chasing them. No need to assume they're bad just because they're kids, am I right? They're potential customers. Or did you recognise them?"

  Ray has had enough. He's struggling not to shiver, and his shirt is beginning to glue itself to him like chilly wallpaper. "No," he says and makes for Texts with a rustle of the supermarket bag.

  Perhaps the word or the plastic sounds defiant, because Woody's stare seems to rise from some depth Ray would rather not encounter. "Next time you run a staff meeting, tell them not to leave the store in future without checking with me first," he says, and then his gaze sinks inwards but doesn't lose its hold on Ray. "No," he decides. "Forget it. I'll deal with everyone myself. That's my job."

  Connie

  She didn't go to bed with Geoff to spite Jill. It wasn't her idea to have a post-cinema drink at Orient/Occident, it was Rhoda's and another girl's who Connie met at university. She didn't object to the venue, however, and once she saw Geoff behind the bar she didn't mind admitting to herself she'd hoped he would be. When it was time for Rhoda and her friend to leave, Connie gave up her lift home so that she could carry on talking to him, and everything after that felt like already having made her choice. That doesn't mean she wasn't in control, and she's not about to lose it: even as a child she couldn't bear it when other children made a fuss, and the few times her parents started arguing in public she wished she could shrink.

  There's no reason for Jill to know about her night with Geoff, especially when they're distressed about Lorraine. Why was she so harsh to Jill about her window display, though? Perhaps she's nervous about how their first author's visit will turn out, but that's no excuse. Controversy is publicity, and surely the best way to promote Brodie Oates. She'll say as much to Jill when she sees her, she promises herself as she drives away from her snug little two-bedroomed house in Prestwich.

  Five minutes later she's on the motorway. In another ten she would be at Texts if it weren't for the fog. Once she sees it crawling onto the road she knows she's close to Fenny Meadows, though the retail park and the sign for it have been blotted out, together with the sun. The wet green fields on either side of her turn grey and diminish to large verges walled in by nothingness, and she feels as if her brain is dwindling too, as if while it's robbed of sunlight the space is plugged by fog. She's in second gear by the time she coasts past Frugo; she could almost imagine the patch of tarmac the fog doles out has given way to waterlogged earth that is dragging the wheels down. She parks behind Texts and hurries down the oppressively blank alley to the front of the shop.

  A breath of fog seems to have caught in her head to grow more stagnant than it already smelled. Clearing her throat doesn't shift it, but makes Gavin cut a yawn short and busy himself at tidying the events leaflets on the counter. All the customers have one; at least a dozen men and women are at large among the shelves. Woody ought to be pleased, but he isn't working today. Connie runs upstairs to the restroom, as he prefers to call it, and blows her nose so hard on several tissues her skull feels pumped up. Her vigour must be why she seems to glimpse a grey mass quivering into view at the foot of the mirror; she's annoyed by having to turn to confirm she's alone in the room. When she has rid herself of enough of the residue of fog to ignore any that remains, she clocks on and flashes a smile at Nigel's shift meeting, Jill included but not singled out, on the way to her desk. She's about to check her email when she hears the meeting scatter and the office door inch open. "Connie?" says Jill.

  Her voice is low and guarded but determined, and her grin looks shy of being noticed. "What's the joke, Jill?" Connie prompts.

  "I don't know if you'd want to call it that," Jill says, snapping open her handbag. "Have you realised what you did, if it was you?"

  Has she deduced somehow that Connie spent the night with Geoff? Why should Connie react as though it has anything to do with Jill? She's suppressing her resentment at being made to feel defensive when Woody jerks his door open. "Something else wrong?"

  "Isn't this your day off?" Connie blurts.

  "Why, would you like it to be?"

  "Only for your sake. You need time off like the rest of us."

  "Time enough for that when we're on top of everything. I'm still dreaming of a stockroom with nothing in it waiting to go down, except that isn't going to be just a dream." He pauses long enough for Connie to wonder if behind his murky eyes he has indeed drifted close to sleep, and then he says "We interrupted you, Jill."

  He's aggravated Connie's defensiveness so much that she's ready to deny whatever the letter Jill produces from her bag is accusing her of. When Jill unfolds it, however, it proves to be an events leaflet. "I was saying to Connie, sorry, Connie, I don't think you could have spotted this."

  Woody lurches out of the doorway to twist his face towards the leaflet. "Hey, that's new."

  For a moment as she peers at it Connie is able to believe that nothing obvious has befallen it, and then she rereads the top line: EVENT'S AT TEXTS. The apostrophe is almost small enough to be mistaken for a crumb of mud—just not quite. "I don't believe it," she hears herself say, which makes her feel even stupider. "I checked it onscreen and when I printed it out as well."

  "Still looks to me like we're screwed, then."

  "Sometimes you read what you expect to be there, don't you?" Jill says. "I didn't see it at first myself. It was when I took a bunch to school to give people, my little daughter asked if there wasn't a mistake."

  Her grin is fiddling with her lips again. It may mean to be wry and sympathetic, but
is she really unaware of worsening Connie's situation? "Maybe people will think it's right and just a bit original, like you," she tells Connie. "It could be saying event is at Texts, you know, there's an event at Texts, though I suppose it should really be events are."

  Connie's almost certain Jill is slyly taunting her. Perhaps she thinks Connie won't challenge her in front of Woody, in which case she's about to learn that she's a presumptuous bitch. Did Connie think something else about her earlier? It's nowhere to be found in her mind now. She opens her mouth, only to feel as though Greg is using it for ventriloquism and to make her look more of a fool. "Connie call six, please. Connie call six."

  "Better do that," Woody says. "And thanks for the publicity, Jill, even if it doesn't give the impression we want."

  She didn't say she gave anything to anyone. Connie would take time to point that out except that Woody is staring at her phone to urge her to use it. "Yes, Greg," she says, having snatched it up.

  "The reading group is asking where they're supposed to be."

  Why doesn't he transfer the call? She knows he's anxious for promotion, but she doesn't care for the way he behaves as though he's already a manager. "Put whoever it is through," she says, "and I'll speak to them."

  "They aren't on the phone, they're here. They're due to start in a few minutes."

  "I doubt it, Greg. Somebody's lost track of time."

  "That's what it says on your handout."

  "Who told you that? Jill?" Perhaps the name sounds like an accusation rather than a request for the leaflet, because Jill hesitates before passing it to her. "I'm not seeing this," Connie says only just aloud.

  "Can't be there then, can it?" Woody says as his eyes demand an explanation.

  "I know I put eighteen hundred, not eleven. I'll swear I did."

  "Swear all you like, just not in front of the customers."

  His voice is so lacking in encouragement that returning to the phone is almost a relief. "Is Wilf about?" she asks.

  "He's on his way to the stockroom."

  "I'll catch him."

  As Connie stands up, Woody lifts an open hand so fast she could take it for the threat of a slap. "Before you hustle, have we finished finding problems with the stuff you wrote?"

  "I hope so."

  "Better make sure, huh?"

  What infuriates her most is that he's saying this in front of Jill. Rage must be blinding her; she can hardly distinguish what she's labouring to read, let alone whether it contains any further mistakes. "Didn't you check it?" she sees no reason not to ask. "I thought you liked to keep an eye on everything."

  "I guess I must have figured we could trust you to fix it this time."

  The nearest to a response she feels able to risk is "Jill, are you hanging around here for anything in particular?"

  Jill reaches for the leaflet and then lets it lie on the desk. "You keep it, I've still got some. What should I do with them?"

  "Connie will give you some with no mistakes in them, won't you, Connie? Let's make certain we don't waste any more paper." Woody adds a stare to that and strides through the staffroom to throw the far door open. "Wilf, you're in demand."

  "I was going to put my books out and the ones you said I had to of Lorraine's."

  "Time for those later. Right now Connie has a surprise for you. Your fan club's waiting down below."

  Wilf is struggling to keep an expression to himself. "Who is?"

  "Your reading group. I know they were meant to be here this evening, but we can't send them away when they've been told it's now."

  This seems not to strike Wilf as any kind of an improvement on whatever he was expecting. "You read the book, didn't you?" Woody urges.

  "I nearly finished it last night at home. I fell asleep at the end."

  "We're talking about how many pages?"

  "At least a chapter."

  Connie senses he hopes that will disqualify him, but Woody says "That's going to take you what, five minutes at your speed? We'll carry the seats down and you follow as soon as you're done. Gonna help me, Connie? Jill needs to be shelving."

  "You go first, Jill." Connie feels absurd for saying this as they reach the doorway, because she's too aware of trying to establish she's still a manager. She stacks four chairs to Woody's seven as Wilf sinks into the last one with the Brodie Oates book. "Lots of new books for you, Jill, and don't forget Lorraine's," she can't or at any rate doesn't resist saying on her six-legged way through the stockroom.

  "I'm not about to forget her."

  Woody plants his stack before the lift and knuckles the button. "See to these while I tell the group everything's on its way, can you?" he says. "I'll catch you at the bottom."

  The rapid trapped staccato of his footfalls on the stairs is brought to an end by the clank of the bar on the door, and then Connie hears the lift hauling itself upwards. Beneath its creaks there's another sound: a woman's muffled voice. Whoever she's addressing seems unable to get a word in, or is she the voice of the lift? If Connie pressed her ear against the door she might hear what's being said, but before she can bring herself to do so the lift announces that it's opening and twitches wide.

  She isn't sure why she doesn't quite trust it. She props a chair against the double thickness of the door and transfers the stacks by degrees into the lift: four, three, three. As she ventures in to push the button, she's poised to dodge out again. The lift tells her it's closing and is meant to wait a few seconds for anyone who's entering. Instead the eager door shoves the chair at her, and there isn't room for her to sidle past it. As she flings the chair aside she realises she ought to have used it to force the lift open. She's certain she has trapped herself, but she scrambles out and almost falls headlong as the door snaps shut at her back.

  She stares as if that may convince Jill she either didn't stumble or intended to. Did she hear the briefest pause, almost like a stifled giggle, between the syllables of the second word the lift pronounced? It must have been a fault in the mechanism. She trots downstairs as Woody reappears from the sales floor. "Should be a lively discussion," he says. "They aren't just readers, they're a writers' group."

  Connie refrains from imagining that he receives a muffled answer from within the lift. It must have said it was opening, because after a pause that makes him click his tongue as though summoning an animal, it does. "Oh, I thought someone was in here," he says.

  She assumes that's a rebuke for leaving the chairs unattended. The one she threw aside has fallen over. He plants it on the heap of three and loads them with three more, and strides out with his arms locked under them while she dashes to retrieve the others. Woody must think she wants to match his speed. He holds the door to the shop open just long enough for her to slip through. "Here we are, everyone," he calls. "Please take a seat."

  As Connie follows him into the Teenage alcove, the people she saw wandering the aisles and lingering over books converge. Most of them are old enough to travel free of charge, apart from two young women who succeed in looking both intense and timid. Once the chairs are arranged in an oval the oldest of the group, a short stout woman with hair plaited like a greying cake, who's wearing voluminous green slacks and a cardigan so multicoloured it borders on the biblical, remains standing. "Are you both talking to us?" she elects herself to ask.

  "Our volunteer's on his way, ma'am." Woody is staring at the door as if this may conjure Wilf when Agnes calls overhead "Manager to counter, please. Manager to counter."

  She needs someone to authorise a refund to a teenager with stubbly pimples who has returned a concert video by Single Mothers on Drugs. As Connie initials the voucher, Wilf emerges from hiding. "Here's our champion reader," Woody announces, which seems not to appeal to Wilf, and makes for the tills as the customer, having crowned himself with a motorcycle helmet, tramps out of the shop. "What happened there?" Woody demands.

  "What did he say was wrong, Anyes?"

  "No music on it, and it didn't look like a concert either."

&nb
sp; Woody frowns as if he thinks Connie should have learned at least that much before authorising any refund, and then he grabs the tape. "I'm going down to the video store to look at this."

  As soon as he's out of the shop, Agnes says "Connie, don't you think we should all go to the funeral?"

  "We can't, can we? Somebody needs to be here."

  "Couldn't we close for it would only be a couple of hours or so? Don't you think Lorraine is worth that much?"

  "There's no use saying that to me, Anyes. It's Woody you'd have to persuade."

  "I thought you might ask him if you thought it was important."

  "I'm sure you can. You seem capable enough," Connie says while she tries to hear what's happening in the Teenage alcove. The woman with the greyish mass of plaits has folded her arms so fiercely she appears to have no breasts and is pointing one forefinger at Wilf. "What's your interpretation?" she's saying in a teacher's schoolyard voice. "It's your choice of book."

  "It isn't really. The girl who chose it isn't, isn't here."

  "It's your shop's choice, and you're the shop. We only bought it because we were told. Hands up anyone who would have otherwise." She rubs her lips together for the instant during which she shakes her head at the tentative gestures of the two young women. "So explain why you set it if it wasn't just someone's idea of a joke," she challenges Wilf.

  "It could have been the author's, some of it anyway, do you think? He'll be here next week in person if you want to ask him."

  "We're asking you. Your boss says nobody reads like you. What do we all want to know?"

  "What the ending's meant to mean," says one young woman, and the other nods.

  "The ending," their spokeswoman cries decisively and jerks her open hands at Wilf, paroling her breasts. "We'd all like to hear what he makes of that, wouldn't we?"

  A murmur of general agreement is combined with laughter bereft of mirth. Wilf sits forward on his chair and lifts his gaze clear of his audience, only to catch Connie's eye across the sales floor. He glances hastily away and blinks at nobody in particular as he mumbles "Maybe it depends how you understand the rest of the book."